Geological & Earth Sciences is above average in terms of popularity with it being the #80 most popular bachelor's degree program in the country. So, you have a fair amount of options to choose from when looking for a school.
For its 2025 ranking, College Factual looked at 20 schools in the Great Lakes Region to determine which ones were the best for geological & earth sciences students pursuing a bachelor's degree. When you put them all together, these colleges and universities awarded 649 bachelor's degrees in geological & earth sciences during the 2022-2023 academic year.
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Choosing a Great Geological & Earth Sciences School for Your Bachelor's Degree
The geology bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality geology program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
Overall Quality Is a Must
The overall quality of a bachelor's degree school is important to ensure a good education, not just how well they do in a particular major. To take this into account we consider a college's overall Best Colleges ranking which itself looks at a collection of various factors like degree completion, educational resources, student body caliber and post-graduation earnings for the school as a whole.
Average Early-Career Salaries
Average early-career salary of those graduating with their bachelor's degree is one indicator we use in our analysis to find the schools that offer the highest-quality education. After all, your bachelor's degree won't mean much if it doesn't help you find a job that will help you earn a living.
Other Factors We Consider
The metrics below are just some of the other metrics that we use to determine our rankings.
Major Focus - How many resources a school devotes to geological & earth sciences students as compared to other majors.
Major Demand - The number of geological & earth sciences students who choose to seek a bachelor's degree at the school.
Educational Resources - How many resources are allocated to students. These resources may include educational expenditures per student, number of students per instructor, and graduation rate among other things.
Student Debt - How much debt geological & earth sciences students go into to obtain their bachelor's degree and how well they are able to pay back that debt.
Accreditation - Whether a school is regionally accredited and/or accredited by a recognized geological & earth sciences related body.
Our complete ranking methodology documents in more detail how we consider these factors to identify the best schools for geological & earth sciences students working on their bachelor's degree.
More Ways to Rank Geological & Earth Sciences Schools
When choosing the right school for you, it's important to arm yourself with all the facts you can. To that end, we've created a number of major-specific rankings, including this Best Geological & Earth Sciences Bachelor's Degree Schools in the Great Lakes Region list to help you make the college decision.
To further help you make the college decision, we've developed a unique tool called College Combat that allows you to compare schools based on the factors that matter the most to you.
Go ahead and give it a try, or bookmark the link so you can check it out later.
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University of Wisconsin - Madison is a wonderful choice for students pursuing a bachelor's degree in geological & earth sciences. UW - Madison is a fairly large public university located in the large city of Madison.
Bachelor's recipients from the geological & earth sciences degree program at University of Wisconsin - Madison earn $4,102 more than the standard graduate with the same degree when they enter the workforce.
Every student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in geological & earth sciences has to check out University of Michigan - Ann Arbor. Located in the medium-sized city of Ann Arbor, U-M is a public university with a very large student population.
Geological & Earth Sciences bachelor's degree recipients from University of Michigan - Ann Arbor receive an earnings boost of approximately $7,008 over the typical earnings of geological & earth sciences majors.
Ohio State University - Main Campus is a great option for individuals pursuing a bachelor's degree in geological & earth sciences. Located in the city of Columbus, Ohio State is a public university with a very large student population.
Those geological & earth sciences students who get their bachelor's degree from Ohio State University - Main Campus earn $2,190 more than the standard geology student.
Any student who is interested in a bachelor's degree in geological & earth sciences needs to check out Michigan State University. Michigan State is a fairly large public university located in the city of East Lansing.
Students who graduate with their bachelor's from the geology program report average early career income of $39,997.
The bars on the spread charts above show the distribution of the schools on this list +/- one standard deviation from the mean.
The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a branch of the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) serves as the core of the rest of our data about colleges.
Some other college data, including much of the graduate earnings data, comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s (College Scorecard).
The geology bachelor's degree program you select can have a big impact on your future. Important measures of a quality geology program can vary widely even among the top schools. Below we explain some of the most important factors to consider before making your choice:
